


25 Ways We First Met

by hitchhikingbabeh



Series: 25 Ways We First Met [1]
Category: K-pop, NCT (Band)
Genre: F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 10:29:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18313712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitchhikingbabeh/pseuds/hitchhikingbabeh
Summary: Twenty-five first meetings of star-crossed somethings.





	1. Tenet

One last look in the mirror and you have to puff your cheeks a little.

It’s not that you don’t look good… but you feel weird. This is routine, you’ve gone on ten other outings like this and you always look the best you can look: healthy skin, shaded where it shades naturally, sultry eyes, delicately contoured features and an equally delicate shade of mauve pink on your lips.

But something about tonight makes you extra uneasy. Your hands shake as you try to press out a small wrinkle in your dress, floor length because it’s too cold for anything shorter, and you try to distract yourself by the details in the Prussian blue number, which glides on the marble floors of your room and gives absolutely no space for the high heels you’re wearing beneath the skirt. It tightens at your waist beautifully, drapes around your shoulders and down your back so you feel like you do usually for these type of events, and you try to convince yourself that tonight will be no different from the other nights.

It’s okay, you quietly tell yourself. This is just like all the others. It’s routine. They’re just trying to help.

You move away from your vanity and cross the mess you’ve made of your bedroom and get to the door. There is a man in uniform waiting on you when you open the double doors to your room, and they smile identical smiles at you when they take you in.

“Spectacular as always, your Highness.”

“Please don’t call me that, I have a name that you may use freely,” you sigh, tired of your title because it’s the two words you’ve heard the most in your life.

“As you wish, Princess.”

“Sehun,” you groan again, and the tall, slim man only smiles and turns his back to you to lead the way downstairs.

The halls in the winter house are larger than the palace, you’d spent the entire year here if you didn’t have studying to do in the capital, and not just things of academia. There’s the horse-riding, the tennis, the long sessions of sitting in at audiences with your parents and the even longer hearings with the counselors to the crown.

You’re next-in-line, after all.

Your guards offer their hands to you as you walk down the spiral staircase that centers the home, but you decide to use your hands to lift your skirt a smidgen as you descend. You’re tired of telling your parents that Johnny and Sehun are more like your elder brothers than they are your guards, that you have no need for them now that you’re older… but Father insists. And when he insists, it’s best to just shut up.

“Is he here yet?”

“Yes, he’s waiting in the dining hall of the East Wing,” Sehun supplies as he starts steering you in that direction, and he’s hiding a smirk as he walks on. “He’s going to be interesting.”

“How so?”

“You’ll see.”

The rest of the walk is quiet, you can only hear the heel of your shoes and the heels of Sehun’s, how they echo in the halls you pass. It’s warm, the atmosphere in here, but it always is when the house is welcoming a guest.

You reach the Eastern dining hall sooner than you’d have liked, and you heave a final sigh as you stand before the doors that open up to it.

“Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be.”

The doors open to reveal exactly what you expected. Except for one little detail. 

Your blind date is giving his back to you when you walk in, and when he turns around, you nearly gasp. He’s beautiful.

“Your kingdom has a weird wind about it. How do you breathe this air?”

Perplexion is what first hits you. He’s different. He looks different, a soft face with surprisingly sharp features. He looks entirely like a bunny rabbit when he gives you a smile, though it’s not entirely warm. He’s wearing clothes that you’re familiar with but had never seen in person.

He’s a prince, too. From quite far away.

You curtsy, and he bows 90 degrees back. He rises and his smile blooms fully, he looks you over and studies your face and comes closer even though the kitchen staff are starting to come in with drinks and the first round of hors d’oeuvres.

“You’re lovely. They said you would be, my advisors, but you’re lovely,” he extends a hand for you to hold and for a moment, you’re not sure what to do. His voice is soft, it has a texture that exudes honesty of the best kind and still holds a strong presence and you’re a little enthralled. Are you dreaming?

“I’m sure you’ve been told, but my name is Doyoung. I believe I, too, have joined the ranks of the people that would like to become your spouse. And I also believe your search is over.”

Hesitantly, you let him lead you to where you’re meant to sit, but he doesn’t leave your side once you’re sat down.

“In my culture, distance is not so much a thing we like to link to these affairs,” he looks over his shoulder to his own guard, a man twice his size but just as lithe as him, “I hope you don’t mind if we meet halfway when it comes to etiquette at the dining table. I’d prefer tonight to be comfortable and not so much cordial. Do you agree?”

He smiles over at you and it is commanding and not. The guard moves towards the other head of the table, pulls out the chair that had been lain there for him, and brings it over to your right hand side.

At first you’re aghast at the breach in protocol, but after he’s sat down and lain his arms on the marble table, he looks over at you and smiles wide, contented, fearless. “I agree,” you say finally, with a laugh with genuine surprise, genuine glee.

The kitchen staff take it as a signal to rearrange things for the new set up, and his place next to you is assembled how it should be in a matter of seconds. Even Sehun is smiling from his spot at the doors when you spare him a glance. He’s so different, he reminds you of the boys you see leaving the universities in the capitol with books under one arm and friends on the other, full of experience you’ve yet to have and a head full of dreams you’ve never dared yourself to dream.

It’s not been an hour and you already see years with him. This must be the fate your parents so fondly tell you stories about during afternoon tea.

Some more people in white and black uniform enter with the first course of the evening. Which is a bowl of something he’s never encountered before.

“And what’s this?” his tone is comfortable, he’s talking to you like you’re a friend and you’re still a bit stunned, a bit enchanted.

“It is onion soup. A famous dish of this region.”

He studied it for a moment, takes the most familiar piece of cutlery at his place (a spoon) and raises a spoonful of the stuff to his nose. And he immediately makes a face that makes you burst out laughing, because it’s the same exact face you made when you were first presented with this brown broth.

“is it supposed to smell like that?”

You laugh again, and he joins in and for a moment, you’re just a pair of young adults with a whole world ahead of them, and he sees in your eyes the same thing that you see in his.

The spark that ignites the flame of destiny.


	2. Maudlin

“Last call! Last call!!” you’re only too happy to call out for the final orders of the night, and you see people opening wallets and pulling out cash and you smile, moving to close tabs as fast as your hands let you. All of your limbs hurt, so you’re too glad for 2AM to clock around and this filthy place to finally close its doors—

And for you to dump a bucket of ice water over the dumbass sleeping at the end of your side of the bar.

You side-eye him as you slide cards, print receipts, hand back change and take tips (good ones tonight, thankfully), secretly wanting a friend of this guy’s to suddenly appear and take him away. You don’t want to have to stay back to contact whoever’s on his speed dial and wait for his belligerent ass to get picked up, you’re already so late and you have homework that needs to be done for your 8AM tomorrow.

And you want to forget that tonight even happened because you’re still having heart palpitations about it.

Eventually, people start filing out of the place. The lights come on and the music gets turned down, and in less than ten minutes you’ve settled a couple dozen tabs… and Mr. Brave on the far left is still passed out.

You sigh, looking over to Taeyong, the bartender on the other side, to cover the rest. He wordlessly accepts, and you move carefully to the very last stool on your section and eye the dark-haired young man with a little disdain and a lot of discomfort. If only you could grab a couple of ice cubes and run them down his cheeks—

But your manager would have your head.

“H-hello, sir?” you tap his head the slightest, a brush of a touch and he doesn’t move. There’s still a lot of noise, a lot of bustle, you’re sure he didn’t even hear you or feel your hands on his head.

“Excuse me?” you move your hands on his shoulder and give it a small squeeze, keeling over so you’re at level with his eyes. “Sir?”

He finally stirs, his nose wrinkling up a little and his eyes scrunching up, too… and it’s kind of cute but you really don’t want to have to call his parents or his significant other to come get him.

“Are you awake? We’re about to close,” you say, a little louder this time, and the young man opens his eyes a fraction to take in the bar, the lights, the pain in his neck, the queasiness in his stomach.

And he rises to sit up and looks at you with hazy eyes, like he’s not fully sober yet.

“What happened?” he sounds groggy, his voice thick with confusion and the obliviousness that comes with mixed liquors. He rubs his eyes to get them to open fully, soothes the back of his neck and stretches a little. “What time is it?”

“It’s just about 2AM,” you supply helpfully, “you’ve been out for almost an hour. Did you come here alone?”

You can’t help but bite at the corner of your lip once you’re finished speaking, and for a moment a thought crosses your mind to tell him he looks more handsome sober. His skin clear and gold, his eyes lit with the spark of confusion mixed with curiosity.

“Uh, kind of?”

And his mouth is really pretty, too.

He takes in the look on your face, but discards it quickly. There are other things that are more pressing than who he came here with. “How many drinks did I have?”

“Ten, because— ”

“My name’s Ten,” he smirks and you have to laugh because he only said that a million times tonight, to you and to about twenty other people. He watches your smile warm and feels the slight pity in your gaze, like you feel sorry for him being alone tonight, for having a bartender wake him up and not a friend or a significant other.

“How drunk was I?”

“Do you not remember anything?” you barely suppress another laugh at the cluelessness in his voice, raising a hand to your lips to cover them. The boy shakes his head and his hair moves like silk in accordance, he’d be a solid ten (hah) if he wasn’t such a buffoon. “Check your phone.”

He taps his pockets and heaves a sigh of relief when he feels that at least he’s got his phone on him, and he wakes the screen to see that he was 734 Instagram notifications and just as many Snapchats.

“Oh, shit,” there’s no humour or glee or excitement in his voice but the expression still makes you laugh, “please tell me I didn’t get naked.”

You don’t say anything as you watch him work about his phone, swaying the tiniest bit in his chair as more people start to crowd up the exit to the bar. You look up at the clock behind you, it reads seven minutes to 2AM. The music is off and all the lights are on, and you see Taeyong start to clean up his now empty area.

And then you hear the loud party that was raging in here about an hour and a half ago come out of Ten’s phone.

He watches and pales at the sight of himself dancing on the bartop, shirt unbuttoned and reservations completely thrown out of every window.

“I’m going to kill him,” he doesn’t have to tell you to whom he’s referring, because you know the video he’s watching was taken by his co-worker, that giant with nice hair and an American accent that was with him earlier. “At least I looked good.”

You have to burst out laughing again.

“Right? It could have been way worse, I could have — ” and there it is. The sound of Ten falling off the bartop and immediately getting back up like nothing happened because he’s spotted someone and blanched.

“What was I doing?”

“Um… keep watching,” you say, and a second later, the boy sees himself go off on someone else in Thai, and you know a little of it and catch the colourful curse words he uses to tell them exactly what he thinks of them. “I assume that’s your— ”

“Ex, yeah,” and he puts his phone away because he doesn’t want to watch anymore. He’d rather just you tell him.

“Did anything else happen?”

“You ordered the four drinks you needed to get to ten and passed out,” you tell him calmly, and he nods, “and told me your whole life story.”

“I’m sorry,” he’s smiling, though, and you have to smile back because he’s starting to look a little more sober, though you can still see the spark of the drunken boy who told you he’s trilingual, lived in two different countries and likes to dance and sing and strange food combinations. “Can I do something to make up for all this? I didn’t break anything, did I?”

“No, thankfully. But I think you might have hurt your ankle when you fell,” you remember him wincing before sitting down to drink his drinks, and he hasn’t got up since. “And you don’t need to worry about your tab, your friend who filmed you covered it.”

“He better have, that bastard. It’s his fault I’m single right now, anyway.”

“Well,” you breathe in and out through gritted teeth, “that’s not exactly true, is it?”

He looks at you baffled, obviously wanting you to explain yourself, and you smile.

“Johnny only made you confront the fact that you didn’t love your ex anymore,” you say carefully, starting to wipe down the bar and hoping you can get away with making things look like Ten is your good friend that will be with you while you close. “If that wasn’t what you wanted, you wouldn’t have told them that you wanted them to go suck a duck for the rest of their life when they came here to stir up drama, right?”

Ten watches you closely, a little dazed. You’re cute and caring, how and where did he get the courage to even talk to you? He was supposed to be here to meet Taeyong, Johnny’s best friend, but he has no recollection of even introducing himself.

“Did I really babble to you all night?” You look up and meet his eyes and he sees stars and whole universes in them and oh, no… his heartbeat is starting to pick up and he feels heat rise from the nape of his neck all the way up to his scalp.

“You didn’t babble. You vented,” you clarify, and give him a moment to nod with just the tiniest bit of embarrassment about him, “and asked for my number five times.”

This makes his eyes jump back to yours instantly, and he looks mostly apologetic and a little curious. He narrows an eye and draws half a smile and you can’t help but smile again, gosh, he’s made you do that all night.

“Did you give it to me?”

You have to grin, because this boy hasn’t lied to you tonight, so you really shouldn’t lie to him, either.

“Every time.”


	3. Welter

Babysitting just never gets easier, does it?

You’re doing it for friends of family tonight, looking after a two-year old ray of sunshine whose name you can’t even remember right now because it’s 10PM sharp and the kid’s been asleep for an hour. Usually you wouldn’t relax this soon, but it’s been really quiet so you’re starting to get sleepy, too.

The night is cloudy and a terrible kind of cold, all the lights are off in this huge house except for the ones you’ve got on in the dining room and you really wish you were at home wrapped in seven blankets drinking some mulled wine. Maybe watching reruns of your favourite shows, too.

So you hunch over the dining table and lay your arms down to rest your head on them, thinking for a moment that maybe you could get a fifteen minute power nap in before you start cleaning up dishes and picking up the mess you and the kid had left behind at his playroom.

The screaming begins at 10:03PM.

You rise with a start and nearly fall off the wooden armchair, immediately moving to sprint upstairs to the baby’s room. He’s screeching like he’s seen a ghost or fallen into a fiery pit and it’s what you expect to see when you open the door to his room— 

But what you actually see is quite the opposite.

The baby stops screaming the minute you open the door, and he looks at you with wide eyes before raising both his arms in your direction.

“Up, up!”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” you groan as you drag your feet in his direction, and he cracks a smile because you’re raising both of your arms in the preamble of exactly what he wants. The kid even has the nerve to laugh when you lift him up in your arms and balance his weight on your hips. “You’re lucky you’re so cute,” you side-eye him, unimpressed, “otherwise, this kind of fit wouldn’t work on me at all.”

Sighing again, you carry him with you back downstairs and go through your usual checklist of shit you know will put babies to sleep in under no time.

You give him warm milk with honey. You rock him for 15 minutes but force yourself to stop because he’s still very awake. You open the fridge, close it, open it back up and consider for a moment slipping a little bit of beer into his baby bottle just to see what would happen.

But you laugh it off immediately and ask yourself if you really are a trustworthy babysitter.

“What am I going to do with you?” there’s still the ghost of a smile there when you meet the baby’s eyes, a shade of brown so dark it reminds you of coffee, of the energy that comes with a new morning, and of shadows at midday. The baby looks back at you and beams before saying something completely unintelligible.

“Is that code for watching TV? We haven’t tried that yet,” and you start to move to the living room, but suddenly he pushes two fists against your shoulder, signaling you to put him down.

So you do.

He stands on his own two feet and looks up at you, smiling again.

Then, he runs off.

And you have to smile, too.

He’s screaming as you “chase” each other around the living room, and you interrupt him occasionally to warn him of the chairs, tables and cluttering on the floor that isn’t child-safe. And he’s bellowing right up until the moment the doorbell rings and you freeze completely because you didn’t order pizza and you sure as hell aren’t expecting anyone at this hour, in this part of town.   
The baby is still running in circles around you as you consider the fact that there could be an axe murderer outside the front door. Or a lost delivery guy. Or a lost hiker.

The doorbell rings again and you defrost a little, consider that the parentals could be early, but then again, why would they ring the doorbell? A serial killer wouldn’t ring the doorbell either.

Your moves are stealthy as you approach the front door; quiet, almost soundless to your own ears as you carry the baby up in your arms and drop him off at the dining room where he’s out of sight and tip toe back to the foyer, where the doorbell rings one more time.

You look through the peephole and see an unfamiliar head of dark brown hair, and take a step back.

“Not a murderer, not a murderer,” you chant to yourself as your hands move toward the doorknob, and when you open the door, you expect to see a gun or a katana but in actuality you see— 

A bag of candy.

And a smiling face.

“My dude— you’re not Mark.”

“I am not Mark,” you clarify, shutting the door slightly because he looks like he’s drunk or high, or maybe both, “who are you?”

“Sicheng.”

It’s like he expects you to know what that means.

“I live next door,” he can tell you’re clueless and he giggles and you swear it’s the most disarming thing on planet earth, “Dong Sicheng. Where’s Mark?”

“Who’s Mark?”

“He’s his older brother— ” in that exact moment, you make all connections and watch as the baby stumbles toward the foyer, recognises Sicheng, and screams in absolute delight.

With the can of beer you’d nursed after dinner hanging from his mouth.

“Oh my God, oh my God, get that out of your mouth right now!”

How did the baby even reach it? How? You run after him and get the can away from him, quickly moving to dig the thing in the depths of the trash bin in the kitchen, and you turn back to see that boy, Sicheng, with the baby in his arms.

Cooing him. Actually coaxing him into being quiet.

It’s like magic. Sicheng looks the baby in the eyes, smiles, and the kid leans into the elder boy’s embrace and quits trying to yell your ears off. Sicheng welcomes himself in the house and even shuts the door behind him, moving towards the couch in the living room while gently rocking the baby in his arms.

And then he looks up at you with those dreamy eyes, his hair glistening with the incandescent lights flooding in from the dining room, and his face literally glowing with the light of the TV on his chiseled face. He smiles and you feel your neck warm up, and you barely even know his name.

“Can we order some pizza? I’m starving.”


End file.
